Beautiful Lady
by BehrBeMine
Summary: Ruthie's in the party. And there's no running from her.


Title: Beautiful Lady  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Feedback: Show the couple some love. I want to feel for how popular an idea they are.  
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own obsession.  
Summary: Ruthie's in the party. And there's no running from her.  
Rating: PG-13  
Distribution: Just please let me know and we'll be good.  
Classification: Martin and Ruthie  
Spoilers: Beginning of season ten... the church social...

- -  
Meredith was wonderful. Her eyes shone with the bright lights beaming down on them, giving her bouncy curls light and life. She was so sweet, so excited to be there, as Mr. Camden and his band sang out their notes of music, Eric's vocals accompanying the long strings of sound. It was perfection, the way he felt about her as he handed her a cup of punch.

Martin smiled politely as she thanked him and then brought his own cup to his lips. It was fruit punch, as in fruit of all flavors. His tongue tasted orange, strawberry, pineapple, and was that kiwi? Devilishly, he dipped hip cup back into the large receiving bowl to absorb more of the tasty treat.

"Good punch, isn't it?" Meredith offered kindly.

"Mm," Martin agreed with a nod of his head.

The two stood then, talking about this-and-that. Meredith only liked cheese pizza, with no toppings at all. Extra cheese was especially good. Martin loved any pizza, especially if it had green peppers sprinkled on top. Martin was a pro at playing pool. Meredith had never played a game of pool in her life. "Something for me to teach you," Martin offered sweetly.

And Meredith smiled. "I'd like that."

Martin liked this girl. Really, a lot. She was sweet, she was beautiful, and was a bit on the shy side - - which Martin liked, because it was so much fun to be the pursuer. In his experience, it had been the girls drawn to him, not the other way around. They usually initiated anything. Here, with Meredith, it was more of a two-way street. It made him feel powerful, in a way, that he was inching things along. Helped convince him that this one was a keeper, seeing how much energy he was putting into the start of their relationship. Whatever relationship that may be.

"Do you want to dance?" Meredith asked timidly.

"I already told you, I don't dance," said Martin. "Especially in front of people who can see me."

"Oh, okay." Meredith bowed her head a bit, staring at her pink satin shoes. Her light, bouncy curls came to fall together, hiding her face.

Martin felt bad. "Buuut... I could try. You could teach me. Keep me from looking like a complete idiot out there, though I have to warn you, dancing with me could very well make us _both_ look like idiots."

Meredith's head shot back up, and she wore a smile. "Well I'm not that good a dancer myself, but I can get around it. It's just about a movement of the body in sway to the music. You just... do what your body tells you."

"My body's telling me to sit down."

Meredith laughed and rolled her eyes. "Come on, Martin. It will be fun."

Sighing in false exasperation, Martin gave in and allowed his date to pull him out onto the dance floor. A slow song had just started. _Great_, thought Martin, _just what I need_.

"Here, I'll show you. I'll guide you." Meredith was so helpful, it made Martin go all soft and gooey inside. He felt like he was melting into a puddle as his warm hands slid around her waist. "Hold onto me there, not too tightly." She then wrapped her arms around his shoulders, cupping the back of his neck with her hands. "All right," she said, smiling shyly, "now dance."

Martin had two left feet. He just couldn't seem to get into any kind of rhythm. He was stiff as driftwood, awkwardly holding her as if he had never held a girl this way before. And maybe he hadn't. All the while, the music played on, that hateful slow-paced song that wouldn't kick it up a notch.

_Saw a black bird_

_Busy on a branch_

_Johnny kicked it down from the tree_

_And the only one sad_

_Was me..._

_Praise to God, who also cared_

_even for Johnny_

"God, what a depressing song," Martin remarked. He glanced uneasily up at Reverend Camden and his band of men, all of which were ecstatic to be on stage in front of people. Gloomy song or no, they were having the time of their lives.

Slowly, bit by bit, Martin was getting a little better at this dancing thing. By the end of the song, he had stopped stepping on Meredith's fragile little feet. She stopped saying "owe!" after the first couple of hits, resigned to the fact that in truth he really wasn't a good dancer, and not wanting to make him feel bad about it.

When the two gathered again at the punch bowl, Ruthie soon came along, groaning. "I don't like my date. He's boring. Martin, how could you do this to me? He is such a loser."

"I don't think your parents would approve of you talking about someone that way." Martin was right, and he knew it. "And just think if your date heard you. What would you do then? Would you say you were sorry?"

"I'm in a state of teenage rebellion. I do not apologize for things that I find true." Ruthie scoffed. "The truth hurts."

Martin stopped sipping his punch then, and eyed Ruthie very closely as he set his empty cup down. "What has gotten into you? Where's the Ruthie Camden I know?"

"She grew up. She became of age. She's done being 'cute' and 'pretty'. Now I'm onto 'sexy'! And I'm loving it!"

Meredith tapped Martin on the shoulder. "I feel like I'm intruding here. Maybe I should leave you two alone for a while...? There seems to be something between you that needs to be settled."

"I - - well I - - " Martin looked from Meredith to Ruthie, uncertain, caught in the middle.

"It's okay, Meredith, I'll return him in one piece," Ruthie assured.

Meredith nodded and headed away.

"You want to dance?" Ruthie asked innocently enough, as a new faster song came on.

"I don't dance," said Martin dully.

"Oh, just like you're not sexy? Come on. You danced with Meredith."

"I never once said that I was sexy. _You_ did."

"Oh, and I meant it." Ruthie grabbed Martin's hand before he could have any more say in it and practically thrust him onto the crowded dance floor. Relieved not to have crashed into anyone as he regained his balance, he steadied himself, eyeing Ruthie. "You think I'm sexy, huh?" He sniggered.

"Of course you are. And so am I. Now get moving."

The music had such a thrumming, rhythmic beat, like the pumping of the blood in Martin's veins and arteries. He had felt so stiff and so worried about impressing Meredith that there had been no fluidity in his movements, no flow. But this was just Ruthie. And the song was faster, easier to groove to. Martin began slowly shaking his hips from side to side, reaching out to lightly tug on his _friend_ Ruthie's hair.

"So this is what sexy people do, huh?" he said to her, liking the feeling of her hair. The natural curls were silky-soft, growing longer by the minute, dark as midnight lit only by the moon.

And Ruthie came on full-fledged. She gyrated her little body, twisting her hips this way and that, sticking out her butt and then her breasts. She worked around Martin in a pattern, sliding oh-so-close to the particular places of his body. It was fun, this experimentation kick she was on, ever since starting high school. Things changed overnight, her thoughts, her feelings, her dreams, her yearnings. Everything was so grown-up now. Everything was... different. Even Martin. He no longer seemed just another brother, he was becoming... something else.

Martin stood helpless, or so he thought, within Ruthie's circular dance movements as she brushed up against him intimately time and again. He thought of Meredith. He thought of Ruthie's "date" (whatever his name was). Where were they, and what must they be thinking about this?

The song ended, and Martin exhaled the breath he did in fact know he had been holding. "Come on," Ruthie said, grabbing a hold of his hand to drag him off the dance floor and away from the crowd. In a small, abandoned hallway inside of the church, Ruthie stopped and whirled around.

Martin stared, bewildered, thinking of where Meredith must be right now. He was abandoning his date, a very nice date, at that, and what for?

"Do you like me?" Ruthie was not shy with her confrontations.

"Yes, of course, or I wouldn't talk to you all the time. Or eat dinner at your house. Or specifically come over sometimes just in search of you."

"No, I mean _really_ like me. Like, _like me_ like me."

"There's a lot of 'like' in that sentence."

Ruthie groaned. "Just answer me."

Martin took pause. "You mean do I like you as in a girlfriend? Like what I have with Meredith?"

"Precisely."

"Ruthie... I think of you as my little sister."

"Do you?" Ruthie stood with her hands on her hips, the front of her dark wine shirt lowering to show the bit of cleavage she had now acquired. "Because, Martin, sometimes I think that you do. I think you don't want me to go out with Mac because - - "

"I don't want you to go out with Mac because I care about you."

"And because you'd be jealous."

Martin guffawed. He slapped his knee and choked for a breath. Finally, he composed himself to say, "I would never be jealous of Mac."

"You would be if he stole me from you. I'm perceptive, I know these things. I'm not as young and idle as you all think."

"I know, Ruthie. You've always been the wise one, the practical one, your father has told me that ten times over. You're the biggest threat to the world because nobody sees you coming. Youngest daughter of a minister, and a family of nine..."

"That's true." Ruthie readjusted the ruffles at the front of her shirt, though why Martin didn't think to ask. "But, Martin, I think you want me. Even if you don't know it just yet."

"You went out with Vincent. I was fine."

"Sure you were, on the outside. And come on. You knew Vincent wouldn't be a threat for very long, I'm sure you sensed that we wouldn't be a couple for all that long. Martin..." Her eyes, so brightly brown and shining, looked up into his, pleading for her words to be true. Did this mean something to her? Did Martin mean something to her?

"Sometimes I think you want me," Ruthie said honestly, "and sometimes, Martin, I think I want you, too. It's perfect. I know you well, and so does my father. He'd have no problem with us getting together, and for some reason I've been thinking about what it would be like for us to be together."

Feelings Martin hadn't really acknowledged before came bubbling to the surface to stew within his belly. This was Ruthie. _Ruthie._ And he was on a date with Meredith. But... what Ruthie said to him, those words, they were breaking through the ice, and she was making him believe exactly what she wanted him to believe. Conniving little thing, she was.

Ruthie seemed suddenly shy as she edged toward Martin, her friend. "I've been dancing with that goon you set me up with for way too many songs. All I could do was think about other things I'd rather be doing, other boys I'd rather be dancing with. And then I looked up, and I saw you, at the punch bowl... And I realized that, Martin, it's you who I want. An older boy, someone popular... someone sexy."

Now it was Martin's turn to be shy as he watched Ruthie scoot ever closer to his body. There were urges within him now that he couldn't let starve and he didn't understand. "I've told - - I've said a thousand times that you're like a sister... to me."

Ruthie was standing right before him now. She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, which quivered in uncertainty. "Would a sister do this?" she whispered into his ear, gently stroking his chest. The cotton of his shirt itched some on her moving hand.

"I..." Martin's thoughts were flashing like street lights, _big red street lights_. Meredith, sister, Meredith, sister, wrong, _Ruthie_...

But while he was busy thinking, Ruthie was busy doing. Intent on her coarse of action now, she stood up on her toes and brought her lips to Martin's, tenderly, with every intent of moving back right away. But Martin's arms started working again; they reached out for her and they clung to her, as he clung to their kiss.

With all of the things he was doing wrong lately, what was one stolen kiss? But poor Meredith...

He parted his lips a little to suck in Ruthie's bottom lip, and lick it gently.

Then they parted.

"I've got to tell Meredith that... I probably shouldn't be dating her anymore..." Martin came to this conclusion after the two of them had stood in an awkward silence, acknowledging each other's presence but no more.

"You'd want to date me?" Ruthie asked, a sly smile on her face.

"Of course! Now that we've..."

"I understand. I was just teasing." Again Ruthie smiled.

"Thanks for that," Martin said sarcastically.

Ruthie reached forward and then pulled Martin into a tender hug, one which had so rarely come from her. But she suddenly felt so happy, like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders of who should-I-could-I date. Martin hugged her back, tightly, grateful that these feelings he never understood had finally bubbled to the surface.

"Guess Lucy was right," Ruthie said, pulling away from the hug, "This party wasn't so bad after all."

- -  
end


End file.
